


the kids are(n't) alright

by WriterGirl128



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Babysitting, Family Fluff, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, PLATONIC LOVE IS SO IMPORTANT, Post s08 but no one died and everyone's still a paladin, Post-Canon, Team as Family, Young Hunk (Voltron), Young Keith (Voltron) - Freeform, Young Lance (Voltron), Young Pidge (Voltron), Young Shiro (Voltron), broganes, kid fic???? kinda????
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 05:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17843456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriterGirl128/pseuds/WriterGirl128
Summary: Lance definitely owed his parents an apology. In fact, if he was anything like this little torrent as a kid, he owed his parentsyears’worth of apologies.(OR something goes very wrong, and the team suddenly finds themselves with six kids to take care of. The weird part is that the kids are...their younger selves?)





	the kids are(n't) alright

**Author's Note:**

> I had the idea for this after coming across a fanart of older keith crouching down and trying to comfort bb keith and I can't find it atm but once I do I'll link it (slash if anyone knows the one I'm talking about, please help ya girl out) 
> 
> there are some world-building things in the endnotes bc I didn't want to clutter this up too much

So.

Lance definitely owed his parents an apology.

In fact, if he was anything like this little torrent as a kid _,_ he owed his parents _years’_ worth of apologies.

He cursed under his breath as he chased after the toddler, skidding around the Atlas’s halls and following the sound of his maniacal little laughter. Because of course, _of course,_ the tiny menace was just out here having the time of his tiny life, while Lance was using every last drop of energy he had left to _avoid panicking._

He fell to a stop where the hall branched off into three, breathing heavily and heart thudding loudly in his ears against the sudden silence. He’d been going mostly off sound—following that giddy, pleased laughter throughout the maze of the Atlas as he ran. He was so caught up in his head, trying to figure out  _what in the fresh hell was happening,_ that he hadn’t even realized it had stopped. Not until it was too quiet, until he was swallowing air down and straining his ears for any sign of life.

It wasn’t long, however, before there was a slight, hiccupping laugh from the forked hall to his left. Lance caught sight of familiar russet curls and dove after them, unwilling to let the kid out of his sight again, lest he get lost in the depths of the Atlas forever.

Which would, in about as many ways as cosmically possible, be _bad._

He sprinted after the boy, digging his heel into the floor forcefully as he shifted his weight, using his momentum to propel himself around the corner.

“Gotcha!” he cheered triumphantly, scooping the child up with one arm and stumbling unevenly to a halt, before hoisting him to his hip. He straightened his shirt, before tugging the kid's t-shirt straight, as well. “Not so high and mighty now, are ya, demon child?”

The kid twisted in his grasp to blink up at him, brown eyes full of delight and laughter, chubby cheeks puffed up with his grin, thoroughly proud of himself for evading capture so long. He reached out and grabbed at one of Lance’s ears, tugging on it and laughing.

“Hide and seek!”

“Nope,” Lance eased, prying the small hand away. “Not right now. C’mon, buddy, we need to go talk to Allura—”

“Noooo.”

And then the kid was pounding his small fists into Lance’s shoulders, kicking with as much gusto as his little—five? six-year-old?—body could muster. “No, no no!”

The boy twisted again, trying to squirm free of his grasp, and a tiny foot delivered a well-placed kick to Lance’s gut. He tightened his arm around the wriggling toddler’s waist, raising his other hand and hitting his watch against his chin to turn the talkback on, narrowly avoiding another kick.

“ _Oof—_ hey, you little—” Lance hoisted the child higher, securing his hold, “—c’mon, we like Allura! She’s pretty! Maybe she’ll let you play with her hair, or something, or her earrings, I don’t know—”

“ _Lance?_ ” Allura’s voice asked, out of breath and tight. “ _Are you alright? Were you able to catch, er…”_

“Yeah,” Lance huffed, “I got him. Now would you please tell me what the _quiznak_ is going on?”

A small, scandalized gasp. “ _Lance!_ ” Hunk chastised. “ _Not around the_ children!”

“‘Not around the children?’” he parroted back, something panicked and hysteric rising in his voice. The toddler in his arms wriggled again, trying to squirm his way free, and Lance secured his hold once more as he turned on his heel and began quickly making his way back to the bridge, throwing his free hand into the air for emphasis. As if anyone could see him. “Hunk, these _children_ are—”

There was a crash from Hunk’s side of the comm—or maybe Pidge’s? Allura’s? Keith’s?—and a sharp kind of shattering sound.

Allura let out a frustrated, strangled sigh. “ _No,_ ” she scorned, “ _no, stop!_ _Coran, would you please grab—ah, no, Katie, you can’t play with—!”_

“ _Guys,_ ” Keith’s voice grit out, frustrated and at a loss, “ _I can’t find him_. _I think I’ll need someone else to help me look—the Atlas is way too big for me to cover on my own, especially if he’s on the move._ ”

Allura sighed into the comm, and Lance could just picture her pinching the bridge of her nose. “ _Pidge, Shiro, please go help Keith. Coran and I can watch the little ones until the rest are rounded up. Hunk, any progress?”_

 _“Yeah,”_ Hunk replied, a little breathless himself but mostly relieved. “ _He somehow managed to make it to Yellow’s hangar? Which is, y’know—both impressive and a little concerning. We’re on our way back to the lounge now. He’s… actually pretty calm, all things considered. Super chill.”_

Lance could hear Allura’s slight sigh. “ _Well, that’s reassuring,”_ she said. “ _And at least we have almost everyone accounted for.”_

There was a touch to Lance’s jaw, small fingers against his skin, and the toddler patted his face as Lance jogged through the halls. “I'm flying!” he crowed, grinning. “We're flying!”

“Yeah, bud,” Lance huffed, out of breath, trying not to think too hard about what was happening. He turned into the final hallway before the entrance to the bridge and veered towards the lounge. “We're flying. You like flying, don’t you?”

One of those little fingers poked him in the cheek. “Yeah! But I want Red. Can we see Red?”

Lance side-eyed the child, who giggled when he looked him in the eye. Did this kid… know about Voltron? About his Lion?

Unfortunately, he didn’t exactly get a chance to ask, as he quickly arrived at the lounge doors, which slid open automatically and with a dramatic _swoosh_. 

The lounge, as expected, was in a certifiable state of chaos. The universe froze for a moment as Lance took it all in.

The cushions from the couch had been arranged in something like a pillow fort that had come face-to-face with a bazooka, strewn every which way and far from their proper homes. Coran was in the back, sweeping up what looked like broken glass from a picture frame that had apparently fallen off one of the side tables, and somewhere in the very back of his mind, Lance worried that it was the team picture they’d taken on the night of the ceremony celebrating the war's official end. There were papers everywhere, scribbled on and colorful, and a few alien-looking objects that must’ve been children’s toys. Shoes, small shoes, far too small to fit any of the paladins’ feet, scattered over the rugs by the door.

Allura was kneeling down at the foot of the couch, her mane of silvery curls falling out of the bun she’d hastily tied it into, trying to coax two kids out from where they lay under the coffee table, her Altean robes bunched up around her and wrinkled.

The most staggering part of it all, however, were the kids themselves.

The smallest of them must’ve been no older than two or three, with big amber eyes and tawny brown hair pulled up into pigtails. The resemblance to the youngest paladin was startlingly apparent, and the teary-eyed glaze to her eyes and the tremble in her chin as her gaze wandered fruitlessly around the room made Lance’s chest lurch.

He’d been around enough kids to know that look. She was looking for someone she recognized, someone familiar and _safe,_ and couldn’t find anyone. She was scared _._

He’d only seen Pidge cry a handful of times, and that was terrible enough. Seeing tinier, younger, squishier Pidge look like she was about to burst into tears, because she was _afraid of them_? Maybe a hundred times worse.

At her side was another child, also partially hidden under the table. Significantly older than little Pidge—or _Katie,_ in this case, Lance supposed, an age far before the disguise of Pidge Gunderson was ever needed—and slightly older than the child still in Lance’s arms. The young boy had clean-cut black hair with a bit of longer forelock, and wore a confused frown over his deep grey eyes. He had a hand resting on Katie’s back between her shoulder blades and was murmuring something to her quietly under his breath, tracing small circles on the back of her shoulder with his thumb.

Shiro. Because _of course_ it was Shiro, offering comfort and support to the people around him, even at age—what? Ten? _Maybe_ eleven?

Lance’s gaze flitted to where Coran was working. There was a dark-skinned girl swinging her legs off the edge of the couch next to him, seeming… much less distressed than the other two kids. She watched Coran clean up the mess with a tilt to her head and chatted with him animatedly, though in a language Lance couldn't understand, but assumed was Altean. She flexed her feet occasionally and then let them relax, trying futilely to get her toes to touch the floor without success. She had Allura’s wide, kaleidoscope eyes and the soft pink Altean markings on her cheekbones, her long white hair pulled back into a thick braid and accented with flower pins that Lance knew, despite never seeing any himself, must’ve been juniberry flowers.

The doors closed behind him and the boy in Lance’s arms cried out in delight at the sight of the other kids, bringing Lance back to reality and restarting time. He writhed intensely, wrenching himself with so much vigor that Lance nearly dropped him entirely.

“ _Dejarme ir,_ ” the boy muttered as he wrestled for freedom, “ _¡_ _me dejó ir!”_

The switch to Spanish was automatic. “ _Mierda—oye, deja de moverte tanto, te vas a—_ fine, fine! Here.” He plopped the boy down to his feet, and the kid beamed up at him with the same eyes Lance sees every day in the mirror, and those freckles Lance forgot he used to have, before rushing over to lie down beside the other children.

Allura blinked at the young boy for a moment, startled, and looked up. “Oh, Lance,” she observed airily, and offered a weak smile. “Hello.”

Despite the slam of his heartbeat in his chest and the confusion muddling his thoughts and the weird pangs of emotions that he couldn’t put names to aggregating densely in his gut, he managed to return her smile with a strained one of his own. “Hi, Princess.”

Allura dropped her gaze to the boy again, who’d reached a tan hand out on Katie’s other side, grin disappearing into something gentle and consoling. Allura’s smile softened. “He’s certainly cute, isn’t he?”

Lance felt his cheeks turn hot, which was _ridiculous,_ because he was looking at a version of himself that was maybe ten years younger than he actually was, next to the young versions of Shiro and Pidge, with young Allura on the other side of the room chatting happily with Coran, and they were _all_ _adorable,_ but that wasn’t the _point,_ and the situation was _weird_ , alright?

He cleared his throat. “Can we… safely say that training’s done, for the day? Please say yes, Allura, because I am _wigging out._ ”

Allura huffed a laugh, brushing a strand of hair from her eyes and settling back on her heels. “I think so, yes.”

Lance crouched down beside her, peering again at the kids under the table. “Pidge seems scared,” he worried aloud, quietly. “Or, Katie, I guess. Do you think they… know what’s going on? Who we are?”

Allura’s expression faltered a bit. “I believe to an extent, though it’s hard to tell. Perhaps they’re only familiar with their own, ah… counterparts? Katie didn’t become stressed until _our_ Pidge left to go help Keith find—um.”

“Little Keith?” Lance suggested, and furrowed his brow. “Should we be worried that he wasn’t able to?”

Allura sighed and shook her head. “There’s been no activity at any of the Atlas’s airlocks, so he hasn’t gone as far as trying to actually _escape._ He’s definitely still on the ship somewhere. Between the three of them, they should be able to track him down.”

Lance nodded, and looked at younger Shiro again, who had lifted his gaze from Katie to regard them warily. He’s older, Lance could tell, which made sense—he was the oldest on the team, after all, besides Coran. It would make sense that his suddenly-appearing younger self would also be the eldest.

Lance settled down to the floor properly. He never considered himself to be a threatening person, at least not at first glance, but if he were a child and wound up in some kind of weird place full of strangers, he’d probably be wary too. He tried to make himself as small and non-threatening as possible when he spoke.

“Hey, bud,” he said quietly. “Do you… know who I am?”

Younger Shrio pressed his lips together for a moment before shaking his head.

Lance swallowed, heart plummeting. “That’s okay,” he assured and tried for a smile. “That’s okay, buddy. We’re friends. You guys are all… you’re all safe, okay? You’re safe.” Lance’s gaze drifted to Katie, still watching with watery eyes and a lower lip jutted out and trembling. “But you—you know Katie?”

Shiro looked down at the young girl, shifting slightly and drawing her a little closer. Again, he shook his head no.

 _Protective of strangers in distress,_  Lance noted _._ Yeah, this kid was definitely Shiro.

He let out a rush of air, closing his eyes momentarily. “Okay,” he murmured to himself, “okay.” He turned his focus to his own younger self, who was watching him curiously. “Buddy? Do you—do _you_ know who I am?”

Unlike Shiro and Katie, younger Lance brightened when he was addressed. “You’re me,” he agreed proudly, before deflating slightly. “…I'm confused, though.”

Lance snorted a little bit, but there was a hint of relief thawing in his chest. “You and me both, little dude.”

Allura hummed by his side, leaning forward and addressing the kids gently. “Shiro? Do you think you two could come out from under there?”

Unease pulled at Shiro’s expression, and for a moment, it almost felt like Lance couldn’t breathe. Shiro was… so _young._ Even in the shadows of the table, Lance could make out his glossy hair and fresh, unmarred skin—the smoothness of his forehead and brow, the innocence in his eyes. It felt like a punch to the gut, seeing a version of Shiro so… _untouched_ by the universe. A version of Shiro that hadn’t been sent to the depths of literal hell and survived to tell the tale.

Shiro pursed his lips for a moment, glancing back down to Katie. “She’s scared,” he murmured quietly, after a moment, and while it was distinctly a child’s voice, it was still very clearly _Shiro’s_ voice. Just, like. An octave higher than normal. “I don’t want to leave her alone.”

Worry pulled at Allura’s features, and she held a hand out in front of them. “She won’t be alone,” she assured him, “and I promise you, no harm will come to any of you.”

Shiro shifted again, glancing between the two of them and chewing on the inside of his lower lip. It was something Lance had seen _their_ Shiro do a number of times, and to see it on this younger version of him felt very surreal. “I dunno.”

Just then, the doors slid open again behind them, and a shadow loomed over their frames from the hallway. Instinctively, Shiro pulled Katie further under the table, and little Lance followed suit.

“And here’s the lounge!” Hunk announced, in a very over-the-top, sportscaster kind of voice as the doors slid shut behind them. He bounced the child in his arms slightly, who cackled in delight at the motion, and flipped him in his grip easily to face the room. Hunk held him easily, assuredly, one arm hooked around his chest and under his arms and the other under his legs like a seat.

“See those couches?” Hunk nodded to the furnishings as he spoke. “They’re the comfiest couches _ever._ You’ll see. Oooh, and that tapestry hanging on the wall over there? Big colorful thing? That was a gift from the Dečuæ people of the 75th Quadrant Zeta—they have this really awesome agrarian society, and they thanked up for liberating them by giving us all of this awesome produce to take with us on our travels. Those banana-pear things?” He untwined one of his arms to kiss his fingertips in faux-tribute, the kid he held never growing unsteady in his grip. “Magnificent. Truly spectacular. Too acidic to be particularly kid-friendly, though, so I'm not sure if you'd like it very much. And—oh!”

Hunk’s gaze landed on the quintet seated on the floor, and his gaze flickered to the couch where younger Allura still sat.

Hunk broke out into a grin, and if Lance hadn’t known him for so long, if they hadn’t been best friends for years and years, he wouldn’t have seen the relief that was laced and abundant inside that smile. “And these are our friends! Well—I mean, they’re my friends. Which, I guess makes them your friends? I don’t know how this works.”

He spun younger Hunk in his arms again so that he could look him in the eye. “You wanna go play with them?”

Younger Hunk, bless his soul, just smiled and nodded.

Hunk bent down and placed him down to the floor, and Lance finally had the chance to get a good look at the kid. He was definitely around younger Lance’s age—probably five or six—which, again, was unsurprising when taking their actual ages into account. And he was the spitting image of the Hunk Lance knew and loved. Kind and easy to smile, with dark brown eyes and a little bit nervous, if the way he picked at his own fingernails was any indication as he approached the group with a lopsided smile. His round face was full of warmth, though, and when he took a seat by the other kids, even little Katie seemed to grow less tense in his presence.

It must be a _Hunk_ thing, Lance thought, because the moment they walked into the room, he felt a little less tense, too.

Younger Lance started babbling on about something that Lance, himself, couldn’t quite follow, but it seemed like tiny Hunk was finding it amusing, and soon even Shiro and Katie were giggling along with each other, slowly making their way out from the cave they'd hidden away in.

It wasn’t long before Allura joined them on the floor, and as their younger selves congregated, Lance, Allura, and Hunk settled down close by, backs to the couch, silently observing at different stages of disbelief and confusion.

After a brief moment of watching the kids interact, Allura lifted a hand to fiddle with one of her earrings. “Pidge?” she asked, and there was an odd double-entendre around it as Lance still had his communicator on. “Shiro? Keith? Any luck? We've got the rest of the kids successfully round up in the lounge.”

“ _Working on it, Princess,”_ came Pidge’s strained reply. “ _I’m… really not good with kids. I found him a bit ago in one of the west wing server rooms, but I kinda scared him off.”_

Lance frowned. “He’s gotta be what, seven? Eight? How’d you manage to scare him off?”

_“Look, it’s not my fault baby Keith is as skittish as an alley cat, okay? I'm trying my best out here.”_

Beside him, Hunk huffed a laugh. “An alley cat,” he chuckled. “That’s a good one. Because he’s like, literally half space-cat, but also just super prickly. I get it. That’s funny.”

“ _You’re not helping, Hunk,_ ” Keith’s voice cut in. _“And Galra aren’t—look. Isn’t there some way to check the security footage or something?”_

 _“Not in real time, no,”_ Pidge lamented. “ _By the time I patch us in, he’ll have already moved on from wherever he’s hiding. I mean, we can access the video logs, but I’d need Shiro and a couple of the Atlas deck crew to help me bypass the security protocols. This isn’t the Castle of Lions—I can’t just access everything I need from my tablet, anymore. We need like, multiple people, entering multiple things on different systems at the same time to bypass the program locks. Which is a really good design—normally.”_

Keith groaned. “ _I just—okay, I don’t know what’s going on, or why there’s suddenly kid versions of ourselves running around the ship, I just want to find him so we can send him_ home _. All of them. This place is too dangerous for children, regardless of who they are.”_

“ _Agreed,_ ” Pidge assured. “ _We’ll find him, Keith.”_

“Actually,” a new voice said, and Lance whipped his head back towards the door, where Shiro was entering with raised eyebrows and crossed arms. “I already did.” He glanced over his shoulder, frowning into the hallway, a slight crease between pale eyebrows. “Keith, bud, come on. Get in here. No one’s gonna bite.”

There was an angry sort of grunting noise from the hallway and Shiro dropped his arms, pinching the bridge of his nose. “God,” he muttered, “wasn’t raising this kid _once_ enough?”

Before Lance could properly react to that, Shiro was turning on his heel and marching out of the room, and Keith was spluttering something indignant into the comms and Hunk was choking out a laugh, and then Shiro was guiding another kid into the room, pushing him carefully but firmly by the shoulders through the doorway.

Young Keith looked… a lot like older Keith, if Lance was being honest with himself. Pre-Quantum Abyss Keith, anyways, who had younger features and rounder cheeks and wider eyes. This Keith was small, surprisingly so, thin and pale, but his eyes were the same dusty grey color, nearly a weird violet under the Atlas’s lighting, with a shaggy mop of dark hair obscuring most of his face from view as he kept his chin low to his chest.  His hands were curled into fists at his sides, and despite his slight stature, when he finally did look up, he leveled a glare at the wall that would rival adult Keith’s signature scowl in a heartbeat.

There was a long exhale from the comms. “ _Where’d you find him?_ ” Keith questioned, voice tinged with relief.

“How _did you find him?”_ Pidge tacked on, like it was more prevalent. “ _We’ve looked everywhere!”_

The kid tightened his jaw and lifted his glare to Shiro, as if daring him to divulge his hiding spot.

Shiro shrugged, unbothered, or maybe immune to Keith’s glares after so many years. “He’s my baby brother, even if he doesn’t really know it yet,” he reminded them. “You don’t think I’ve ever had to track him down before?” He glanced back at the boy, dipping his head inquiringly. “My question is how you managed to make it all the way to the observation deck so quickly, when Pidge _just_ saw you on the first level.”

Younger Keith jutted his chin out stubbornly, and it was clear that this kid had fire in him. Lance knew that, of course—adult Keith had fire in him, too. It had become a bit more tamed, the last few years, a bit more controlled, not as wild and destructive, but it was definitely still there. The same kind of control didn’t seem to apply to this kid.

He crossed his arms over his chest in a Keith-esque-pose if Lance ever saw one, shooting an accusing glare up at Shiro before stalking away and sinking to the edge of the couch furthest away from everyone else.

Shiro sighed, rubbing at his eyes slightly before shifting his gaze towards the rest of the children, his own younger-self gazing up at him curiously. Shiro offered him a tired smile and a slight wave, and something unreadable passed over the younger boy’s face.

He frowned at Shiro, glancing down at his own hands, then back up.

Shiro’s expression twisted, and Lance realized at what seemed like the same time as Shiro where the boy’s confusion stemmed from: the floating prosthetic arm that just waved at him.

Shiro sighed and turned to Allura. “We…  need to talk.” His gaze skimmed over the kids, all watching curiously except for Lance, who was running his fingers through Allura’s hair and re-braiding it himself, and Keith, still glowering at his feet. “All of us. Pidge, Keith—meet us in the conference room next to the bridge.” He turned towards the Altean advisor. “Coran, do you mind—”

“Not at all, my boy,” Coran assured with an understanding smile. “Why, I can’t even tell you how many vargas went into babysitting this one here, in her younger years,” he continued, teasing slightly and smoothing Allura’s hair back fondly. “Besides—it’s been many moons since I’ve had some young ears to share my favorite Altean mythos with. Seems like a good a chance as any, don’t you think?”

Lance winced—when Coran went in on his stories, there was no guarantee of making it out alive—but took note of the wistful look in the man’s eyes as he spoke. He could picture Coran, long ago, watching over the royal family’s children with the joy and dedication he always had when watching over the paladins, and felt a pang of sadness for him, and his lost people. When was the last time Coran had been able to do this? To care for people, _kids,_ in a way that clearly brought him joy?

Watching over the paladins was different. Sure, he was like their… weird space uncle, or something, and he was as irreplaceable as anyone, but for the most part they were all _adults,_ and the ones that weren’t adults were thrust into roles that forced them to act like it regardless _._ They didn’t need to be cared for in the same way children did—the way that Coran had, evidently, _missed._

Shiro smiled at him, seeming to sense the same, and squeezed his shoulder briefly. “Thanks, Coran. We won’t be long, we just…”

“Need to figure it out,” Coran agreed, nodding. “I understand.” He curled his mustache around his finger for a moment before turning towards Allura. “I would evaluate the headbands’ capture history, Princess, if you can. It’s not… quite the same as it was on the Castle, but perhaps that malfunctioning interface is where the problem lies.”

Allura offered him a tight smile as she got to her feet, gripping his arm fondly in thanks. “We’ll take a look,” she assured. “And if we need your help, we know where to find you.”

Coran beamed back at her. “That you do,” he agreed, and spun on his heels to address the children as the team made their way towards the door. “Now, my young friends! Who would like to hear the tale of the great warrior Esran, and her valiant battles with the noxious jlanmurgs of planet Xa?”

There were a few cheers from the kids and a small "oh" whined in an accented, girlish voice—"but I've heard this story  _thousands of times,_ Coran!"—as the doors slid shut behind them.

Once out of sight, out of earshot, the reality of the situation crashed back to Lance. He staggered on his feet, halting where he was in the hallway.

What the _hell_ was going on?

Seriously,  _what was happening_? 

He opened his mouth to ask, but found he couldn’t make a sound.

He closed his mouth and followed Shiro, Allura, and Hunk dutifully away, and he couldn't help but think of how this was either going to be one of the most interesting experiences of his life, or the most _mortifying_.

**Author's Note:**

> some context in terms of what I'm using/ ignoring from canon:  
> \- s08 happened!! but only the good parts  
> \- meaning allura didn't sacrifice herself bc boo that  
> \- the paladins and the atlas crew are traveling and assisting the blades with diplomacy and humanitarian efforts, as well as disestablishing any remaining Empire outposts  
> \- allura and lance decided sometime pre-fic that they're better off as friends because they realized things were rushed and that allura wasn't over lotor and that they both deserved better (and they're great friends and found that they work better that way, regardless)  
> \- I'm really not focusing on anything much that happened in late canon, because it's a whole can of worms, but let's just set the stage as a time post-war, honerva is defeated, the team is traveling on the atlas with the vibe of "space police" like in the earlier seasons of vld, and call it a day  
> \- so yah no allurance, no klance, no ships, bc this fic is supposed to be WHOLESOME and a little angsty and emphasize the platonic love the paladins share as a found family unit and that is all
> 
> also jsyk this whole thing is probably going to be pretty dialogue heavy, so... sorry? 
> 
> let me know what you think so far!


End file.
